Overpay in UFA on short term deals or swap players like Mangiapane/Dube for players the pro scouts think are a better fit. Don't need to spend assets to do it.
Play that scenario out and what benefit is there?
You trade Mang/Dube for a Duclair and what happens?
Best case scenario, Huberdeau starts playing a bit better with him and we end up where? 9th/10th in the West with a mid draft pick?
Huberdeau and Duclair aren't winning you any Stanley cups or making you a contender; especially with Lindholm/Hanafin/Tanev/(Dube or Mang) gone.
Or you trade Mangiapane/Dube & the UFA's for picks/prospects, ride out whatever Huberdeau is this season and go into the next draft with a great pick plus more accumulated assets from those trades.
Getting a friend of huberdeau right now is the most short sighted option management could ever make.
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Play that scenario out and what benefit is there?
You trade Mang/Dube for a Duclair and what happens?
Best case scenario, Huberdeau starts playing a bit better with him and we end up where? 9th/10th in the West with a mid draft pick?
Huberdeau and Duclair aren't winning you any Stanley cups or making you a contender; especially with Lindholm/Hanafin/Tanev/(Dube or Mang) gone.
Or you trade Mangiapane/Dube & the UFA's for picks/prospects, ride out whatever Huberdeau is this season and go into the next draft with a great pick plus more accumulated assets from those trades.
Getting a friend of huberdeau right now is the most short sighted option management could ever make.
No, best case scenario is someone taking Huberdeau a la Karlsson. Flames are still a bottom 5 team even if Huberdeau gets back to 100 points unless some prospects really surprise. Mangiapane and Dube don’t have much value and you are looking at swapping them out for similar players anyways.
I think you have to ignore his salary in both directions when making a decision. You don't give him 1st line minutes and PP1 time because he makes $10.5M and you also don't scratch him and play Walker Duehr because he's not living up to his contract.
Even at his reduced performance - its impossible to find 7/8 forwards on this team who should be on the PP over him.
I didn't reference his salary in my post, I mentioned his play. Ice time should be earned, currently he is not and has not for over 100 games now earned top tier minutes, or PP time.
I get all the reasons they have tried to get him going, nothing seems to work, he has no on ice chemistry with anyone on this team, outside of Pelletier that I have seen. I don't think this organization should be going out and spending assets to get someone that "may" make him better, even if that player has played well with him in the past. If in the process of trading away UFA's you can get that piece back then ok. Specifically targeting it and giving away anything more then a 7th round pick is too much.
I also never said scratch him, I said reduce his minutes. start by playing him 10-12 minutes, re-enforce the good things he does in that 10-12 minutes. If/when he plays better that 10-12 minutes can increase. I guess if that 10-12 minutes doesn't go well you reduce further and further eventually scratching.
If this org is moving towards a retool/rebuild, I don't actually think Huberdeau's contract will be a hinderance for a few years at least, So I am not really concerned about that.
I will say on the money front, I believe anyone that is making 10.5 mil should be making the players around him better. Not having to cycle through the whole organization to find 1 person with Chemistry. Then have that organization looking to spend assets to bring in someone else I may have chemistry with is just crazy talk.
I want him to play better, I want to enjoy watching him play, I want to see him win with the Flames. His play has just convinced me that he is closer to a 2 Million dollar player then a 10 million dollar player. If he manages to turn it down, I will be happy, although I feel like the odds of that are the same as me winning the lottery.
Assuming that Edwards will write a check for $50MM or so, and still allow Calgary to spend to the cap.
That's doubtful, especially since Calgary may not need that cap space anytime soon.
And you are assuming that compliance buyouts will be permitted.
Yeah I'm not so sure Edwards will willingly eat all that money. Brouwer is the only player of significant salary the Flames have ever bought out and that was only the final two years of his deal.
I can see a compliance buyout happening within the next two years. He will be gone.
Why would there be a compliance buyout period? They've only happened after lockouts when the cap has gone down or stayed flat (or was instituted), which is not expected to happen.
No, only because I think Huberdeau would do well in Edmonton's wide open, no defence style of play and rack up points with McJesus.
That would suck too much to see. We'd also be helping Edmonton by removing Nurse.
Ignoring rivalry for a moment and looking only at contract value to the Flames; yes I would.
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I blame the franchise to a large extent. You can't pay $10.5m to a player that doesn't drive play. Very stupid.
There was plenty of criticism around Huby when he played the for the Panthers. Weak defensive play. Cheats for offense. Doesn't play against the other teams best players. Doesn't drive play.
You sign that guy to 8. X 10.5m , you get what you get.
I blame the franchise to a large extent. You can't pay $10.5m to a player that doesn't drive play. Very stupid.
There was plenty of criticism around Huby when he played the for the Panthers. Weak defensive play. Cheats for offense. Doesn't play against the other teams best players. Doesn't drive play.
You sign that guy to 8. X 10.5m , you get what you get.
Funny part is the Flames were almost saved from themselves.
Gaudreau would likely be less of a disaster...but honestly a 8 x $10.5M deal for him would probably have similar outcomes to this Huberdeau deal...but he decided he didn't want it and now Columbus is seeing similar issues with him instead.
Really acquiring Huberdeau painted them in the corner of making that same mistake because there was no way he was re-signing for less than what they offered Gaudreau considering they had similar production to the contract.
The path out would have been either not trading for Huberdeau, or flipping him right away...because you couldn't go into the season with him as a pending UFA right after losing Tkachuk and Gaudreau...but really it sucks that he fell off as much as he did because even if he was producing 80 points people would be unhappy with that for $10.5M.
Last edited by SuperMatt18; 12-13-2023 at 02:46 PM.
I agree with an earlier take. The guy makes one or two genius passes a game. If someone could actually put half of those in the net, we'd be ignoring his warts (and winning hockey games).
I think Lindholm may have a personal vendetta against him, and purposely shoots wide of open nets in these situations.
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I blame the franchise to a large extent. You can't pay $10.5m to a player that doesn't drive play. Very stupid.
There was plenty of criticism around Huby when he played the for the Panthers. Weak defensive play. Cheats for offense.Doesn't play against the other teams best players. Doesn't drive play.
You sign that guy to 8. X 10.5m , you get what you get.
It's funny because these are the least of his issues here. Yes, I know - plus minus. But It's been way better since he moved to Backlund's line, where he often does play against the opposition's best.
I agree with an earlier take. The guy makes one or two genius passes a game. If someone could actually put half of those in the net, we'd be ignoring his warts (and winning hockey games).
I think Lindholm may have a personal vendetta against him, and purposely shoots wide of open nets in these situations.
I don't think it's only Lindholm, but IMO the personality issues that have been rumored over the last few years swirl around Huberdeau. The guys in the room don't seem to like him for some reason.
I think we can safely say Huberdeau is not a play diriving top line player, and that mistake was made by our pro scouts and ex-GM over a year ago, we just need to accept it for what it is right now.
I don’t buy the notion that a half-dozen people in Flames management and scouting were all bad at their jobs. I expect they had a pretty good handle on what kind of player Huberdeau is and his limitations.
They didn’t sign Huberdeau because they believed he was something that he isn’t. They signed him because after the departures of Gaudreau and Tkachuk, the Flames were in jeopardy of being regarded as a train-wreck of a franchise. Media all over North America were asking what was wrong with Calgary and why nobody wanted to play there. Signing Huberdeau (who had just finished 3rd in league scoring) and Kadri (who was the biggest fish in the UFA pond that summer) was about changing the narrative that the Flames were a sad-sack, bottom-tier franchise.
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Last edited by CliffFletcher; 12-13-2023 at 03:12 PM.
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It's funny because these are the least of his issues here. Yes, I know - plus minus. But It's been way better since he moved to Backlund's line, where he often does play against the opposition's best.
Any maybe thats why he generates no offence. It might be that he needs to cheat to generate plays for whatever reason. Maybe he doesn't have the energy and/or speed to play a two way game.
In those highlights...where is he when the play transitions to offense?
You remember how everyone thought "Oh the Flames can't rebuild, not with these players - not with these contracts"... Well, the current state of the team is perfect. Huberdeau is committed here. It's not working out right now, but look at the team around him - they're no good either.
We don't need to do anything with Huberdeau right now. I think we should collectively be just fine with what he's currently doing. Him fitting in with the rest of the mediocre/poor roster is helping this team build a new foundation. It's literally the best case scenario for the team right now. In the future, who knows what happens. Maybe the Flames draft Cayden Lindstrom and he clicks with Huberdeau - that could be a hell of a thing. I think we can safely say Huberdeau is not a play diriving top line player, and that mistake was made by our pro scouts and ex-GM over a year ago, we just need to accept it for what it is right now.
If Huberdeau was playing at a PPG pace right now, so what? That'd be bad for the Flames. That'd probably be an extra handful of points in the standings and they'd be plunking along as a wild card team just waiting to get destroyed in round 1, all while probably holding onto our UFAs as "internal rentals", yuck.
What's happening right now is the medicine this team needs. It's not a problem.
Agree. Right now he's a Matt Stajan overpaid. In three years, he can be a 2/3 winger at 60pts. He'll still be overpaid, but at least he'll be in a position to help us win.
The real issue for the team is acquiring 3-4 assets to fill out our top line of the future.
